Available for downloading: the Helping Youth after Community Trauma: Tips for Educators fact sheet. Traumatic events, such as a natural disaster, school violence, or the traumatic death of a peer or educator, can affect students’ learning, behavior, and re-lationships. The tipsheet lists common reactions educators might see in the students with whom they work and suggestions on how they may help.

October is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month. In support, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) is providing resources for families, teens, educators, clinicians, mental health professionals, and law enforcement per-sonnel on how to recognize, deal with, and pre-vent bullying.

October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Every year millions of children are exposed to incidents of domestic violence which affect every person within the home and can have long-lasting negative effects on children's emotional well-being, and social and academic functioning. In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) is offering resources to help educate parents and families, educators, professionals, and policy makers about domestic violence.

Exposure to community and interpersonal violence is a public health crisis. After witnessing or ex-periencing traumatic events, many children exhibit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, behavioral problems, substance abuse, and poor school performance. The Support for Students Exposed to Trauma: The SSET Program is a series of ten lessons aimed at reducing distress resulting from exposure to trauma. Implemented by teachers or school counselors in groups of 8–10 middle school students, the program includes a wide variety of skill-building tech-niques geared toward changing maladaptive thoughts, promoting positive behaviors, and increasing levels of peer and parent support for affected students.

The program is available as a free 198-page eBook which includes the Group Leader Training Manual, Lesson Plans, Lesson Materials, and Worksheets. The Group Leader Training Manual introduces the SSET concept and provides detailed information on selecting student participants, scheduling lessons, assuring confidentiality, coordinating with clinical backup, managing difficult situations and issues, and conducting group meetings. The Lesson Plans section supplies group leaders information on preparation and in-depth plans for each lesson. Take-home worksheets, letters to parents, forms, and other program materials are supplied in the section entitled Lesson Worksheets and Materials.

On September 5th, the CDC released this report which examines sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence victimization using data from 2011. NISVS is a national random-digit-dial telephone survey of the non-institutionalized English- and Spanish-speaking US population aged 18 and over. In 2011, 12,727 interviews were completed.
The report concluded that a substantial portion of female and male adults have experienced some form of sexual violence, stalking, or intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime, and that a substantial number of US adults experienced these events during the 12 months preceding the 2011 survey. The overall results suggest that women, in particular, are heavily impacted over their lifetime; however, results also indicate that many men experiencing victimization in childhood or adolescence. Because of the broad range of short- and long-term consequences known to be associated with these forms of violence, the public health burden is substantial.

The National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health at Georgetown University and the JBS International, including NCTSN members, have created a comprehensive web-based, video-enhanced resource tool: Trauma Informed Care: Perspectives and Resources. This tool—comprised of issue briefs, video interviews, and resource lists—offers guidance and resources to help child-serving systems and provider organizations become more trauma informed.

Juliet Vogel, NCTSN member, with Ruth Pat-Horenczyk and Danny Brom, have co-authored Helping Children Cope with Trauma, which bridges theory and practice in examining emerging approaches to enhancing resilience and treating traumatized children. Adopting a child-centered perspective, it highlights the importance of the synergy between individual, family, community and social interventions for recovery from post-traumatic stress.

Consisting of chapters by an international range of contributors, the book is presented in three sections (Individual, Family, Community) reflecting the ecological circles of support that facilitate healthy development in the face of traumatic circumstances. The book concludes with a theoretical discussion of the concept of Survival Mode as an organizing principle for understanding post-traumatic phenomena.

The Child Welfare League of America, in partnership with the NCTSN, is launching a new webinar series this fall addressing current advances in the field of trauma-informed child welfare practice. The first webinar—Adoption and Trauma Communities Coming Together to Improve the Well-Being of Children Involved with Foster and Adopted— will discuss how the adoption and child trauma stress communities can inform each other's work and improve cross-disciplinary practice.

All webinars in the series will be held the 2nd Thursday of the month beginning November 13th from 3-4:30 Eastern / 2-3:30 Central / 12-1:30 Pacific. Presenters will be Darlene Allen, MS, Ex-ecutive Director at Adoption Rhode Island, Sarah Kelly-Palmer, LICSW from Family Service of Rhode Island, and Kelly Sullivan, PhD from the Center for Child and Family Health, Duke Univer-sity Medical Center. All of the webinars in this series will be recorded and made available on-demand at www.cwla.org. Email Julie Collins, LCSW, Director of Stands for Practice Excellence, at jcollins@cwla.org for more information about this series.